I haven't used a tablet. Their portability appeals to me but I have wondered how well they work for word processing. Maybe a plug-in keyboard can be used for that. I can't imagine doing lots of keyboard entry on a touch screen. Perhaps someone can address that question.

Enjoy the tomatoes.

Jim

Annie's Salsa for those tomatoes. You'll be enjoying it this winter, when you need it most.

If your son needs Windows and MS Word, don't waste money on a tablet, get him a laptop or netbook. The only tablet worth getting is the iPad, and while he can certainly add "Documents to Go" or another app that works with MS Word, the laptop/netbook will do better.

Many years ago, we had a lot of tomatoes and we made sauce and froze it.
Easy: Cook the tomatoes (in our case it was the tiny ones) with skins, but you can remove if it the larger ones, strained thru a colander, like I use to use when making jams/jellies, add seasoning like Italian or Mexican, cook again then freeze. Some of the sauces I even strained. Not sure of the cooking times.

When you eventually find yourself up to your KNEES in tomatoes, can them. Peel (30 sec dip in boiling water), chuck/crush/whole, into canning jars and hot water bath for something like 15 minutes... not sure on time. Because of the acid in them, easy to can and last a long time. You don't need a "canning pot", just something deep enough to allow jars to be covered by about an inch of water.

I don't have the patience (or a killer recipe) for sauce. Sometimes just chunk tomatoes, cook till soft, run thru food mill and reduce a bit. Sorta "virgin" sauce... no herbs, spices, garlic etc... something to be simmered down later.

They do freeze great... but I usually don't have the room to spare.

I'm envious of your tomatoes. We can't grow tomatoes here at the immediate coast but last summer we made another stab at a veggie garden & planted 10 heirloom tomatoes (along with other bunny delights!). Well, we had an abnormal summer with scorching hot sun every day & little rain. The tomatoes thrived. We got over confident & planted 12 heirlooms this spring. This year, we're having our normal weather...temps in the mid-60s to mid-70s, marine layer creating what we call "Mystic Pewter Skies", & abundant rainfall (already over 5" with more this week). The tomatoes are miserable, several have keeled over dead, a couple more are in the hospital & are unlikely to recover, & the rest are just sitting there looking just as they did back in mid-May. :( Enjoy your harvest!

For yummy dehydrated tomatoes...slice, cover in red wine, sprinkle with salt, basil, & oregano & refrigerate covered overnight. Drain & dehydrate as usual. Delicious.

No opinion on notebook vs tablet but I love my new Sony Google TV. Surfing the net & sending emails while I watch TV is great.

/tricia

Right now it's 67F here and raining, and we got 4.25 inches of rain one day last week. Fortunately my few tomatoes in my backyard raised garden are thriving, they are about shoulder tall and have lots of little tomatoes. It's supposed to be 90F by Friday, so that'll probably make them happy.

Elery has one of the little tablet type computers, an Acer. I hate it, it's impossible to use the keyboard and the cursor/pad is so small it's nearly unusable. If he's going to be doing any amount of word processing, documents or functions that require a lot of keyboard input, don't get one of the small tablet/netbook types. Well, that's my opinion, I'd rather not even access the internet than use that blasted thing.

the first thing I do with fresh tomatoes is eat a tomato sandwich, on white bread, with salt, pepper and Miracle Whip. The second thing I do is make Sol's tomato pie.

Annie

We like them sliced and roasted with salt and pepper, some basil and olive oil. I roast them on oiled, tin foil sheets until brown and caramelized. We can eat bushels this way.

I go down to our garden every few days and talk to our five Sungold plants - 'Please? When?' Lots of flowers...I'm impatient!